U.S. getting mountain troops ready

Officials maintain secrecy about possible mission

October 04, 2001|By Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — Elements of the U.S. Army's elite 10th Mountain Division were being readied for possible overseas deployment Wednesday as the Bush administration moved to shore up support in the Middle East for military operations in and around Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the division would neither confirm nor deny that the units were being deployed to staging areas in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on Afghanistan's northern border, but he said they had been undergoing training exercises.

FOR THE RECORD - This story contains corrected material, published Oct. 6, 2001.

The two former Soviet republics adjoin areas in Afghanistan either controlled by or contested by the rebel Northern Alliance, which is fighting to overthrow the Taliban regime that has harbored suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Official: `I cannot comment'

According to the spokesman, about 200 troops from the 10th Mountain Division were scheduled to be sent to Kosovo, Yugoslavia, to support peacekeeping operations there and had performed training exercises in front of news media in preparation for that assignment.

"I cannot comment on Afghanistan," the spokesman said.

The 10th Mountain Division, which saw combat in the Persian Gulf war, numbers about 14,000 and is part of the 18th Airborne Corps, which also includes the parachuting 82nd Airborne Division and the helicopter-borne 101st Airborne Division, among other elite units.

The 10th Mountain Division contains two rapid-deployment light-infantry brigades, an aviation brigade with three helicopter-borne fighting regiments, two rapid-deployment artillery units and five support battalions.

"They were in the gulf and have had substantial training in this kind of [mountainous] terrain," said military analyst Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a Washington think tank.

Goure said he expected the division's troops to use Uzbekistan as a staging area.

The Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the service's premier night attack and helicopter force, was dispatched to the Mediterranean last week. The regiment, also known as the "Night Stalkers" is based with the 18th Corps' 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. but is not part of its command structure (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).

Victoria Clarke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, acknowledged at a briefing that 350 warplanes and two Navy carrier battle groups are positioned in areas near Afghanistan and that a third carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, was moving into the region from the Pacific.

An amphibious assault ship carrying 2,000 Marines was also in the force being assembled, she said.

She said total troop strength was at about 30,000, but added: "These are approximate numbers. These numbers change. They are flexible."

Small units of U.S. special operations commandos have reportedly been inside Afghanistan in an attempt to locate bin Laden and identify military targets.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the U.S. military has maintained a tight lock on information concerning operations, refusing even to discuss the military capabilities of 50-year-old aircraft described on the Pentagon's Web sites.

A British Embassy spokesman in Washington said that no British troops were being readied for action in Afghanistan, though three British commando regiments and a fleet of 27 warships were participating in exercises near Oman in the Persian Gulf.

On Saturday, four correspondents writing for the British newspaper The Guardian reported that U.S. military operations in Afghanistan would be supported by troops from an elite SAS regiment and a section of Royal Marine Commandos.

Spy plane shot down

The Pentagon has acknowledged that a U.S. RQ-Predator, an unmanned, remote-controlled turbo-prop spy plane, was shot down by Taliban forces last month in Afghanistan. The aircraft has a combat range of just 454 miles, meaning it could have been launched from a country adjoining Afghanistan.

Clarke said some 20,000 members of reserve and National Guard units have been called to active duty. Their contingents include two bomber, 17 fighter, two aerial refueling, five aerial command and control, and six air combat communications units.

Also called up were portions of nine air base perimeter security units, 10 military police units, five intelligence units, two inshore boat units and a military morgue unit from Puerto Rico.